landed from
Jamaica. She has a curious history, if you care to hear it; I don't think
I've seen you at all since I made friends with her?'
'No,' said Kendal; 'I was beginning to suspect that something absorbing had got hold of you. I've looked for you two or three times at the club, and could not find you.'
'Oh, it's not Miss Bretherton that has taken up my time. She's so busy that nobody can see much of her. But I have taken her and her people out, two or three times, sight-seeing, since they came—Westminster Abbey, the National Gallery, and so forth. She is very keen about everything, and the Worralls—her uncle and aunt—stick to her pretty closely.'
'Where does she come from?'
'Well, her father was the Scotch overseer of a sugar plantation not far from Kingston, and he married an Italian, one of your fair Venetian type—a strange race-combination; I suppose it's the secret of the brilliancy and out-of-the-wayness of the girl's beauty. Her mother died when she was small, and the child grew up alone. Her father, however, seems to have been a good sort of man, and to have looked after her. Presently she drew the attention of an uncle, a shopkeeper in Kingston, and a shrewd, hard, money-making fellow, who saw there was something to be made out of her. She had already shown a turn for reciting, and had performed at various places—in the schoolroom belonging to the estate, and so on. The father didn't encourage her fancy for it, naturally, being Scotch and Presbyterian. However, he died of fever, and then the child at sixteen fell into her uncle's charge. He seems to have seen at once exactly what line to take. To put it cynically, I imagine he argued something like this: "Beauty extraordinary—character everything that could be desired—talent not much. So that the things to stake on are the beauty and the character, and let the talent take care of itself." Anyhow, he got her on to the Kingston theatre—a poor little place enough—and he and the aunt, that sour-looking creature you saw with her, looked after her like dragons. Naturally, she was soon the talk of Kingston: what with her looks and her grace and the difficulty of coming near her, the whole European society, the garrison, Government House, and all, were at her feet. Then the uncle played his cards for a European engagement. You remember that Governor Rutherford they had a little time ago? the writer of that little set of drawing-room plays—Nineteenth Century Interludes, I think he called them? It was his last year, and he started for home while Isabel Bretherton was acting at Kingston. He came home full of her, and, knowing all the theatrical people here, he was able to place her at once. Robinson decided to speculate in her, telegraphed out for her, and here she is, uncle, aunt, and invalid sister into the bargain.'
'Oh, she has a sister?'
'Yes; a little, white, crippled thing, peevish—cripples generally are—but full of a curious force of some hidden kind. Isabel is very good to her, and rather afraid of her. It seems to me that she is afraid of all her belongings. I believe they put upon her, and she has as much capacity as anybody I ever knew for letting herself be trampled upon.'
'What, that splendid, vivacious creature!' said Kendal incredulously. 'I think I'd back her for holding her own.'
'Ah, well, you see,' said the American, with the quiet superiority of a three weeks' acquaintance, 'I know something of her by now, and she's not quite what you might think her at first sight. However, whether she is afraid of them or not, it's to be hoped they will take care of her. Naturally, she has a splendid physique, but it seems to me that London tries her. The piece they have chosen for her is a heavy one, and then of course society is down upon her, and in a few weeks she'll be the rage.'
'I haven't seen her at all,' said Kendal, beginning perhaps to be a little bored with the subject of Miss Bretherton, and turning, eye-glass in hand, towards the sculpture. 'Come and take me some evening.'
'By all means. But you must come and meet the girl herself at my sister's next Friday. She will be there at afternoon tea. I told Agnes I should ask anybody I liked. I warned her—you know her little weaknesses!—that she had better be first in the field: a month hence, it will be impossible to get hold of Miss Bretherton at all.'
'Then I'll certainly come, and do my worshipping before the crowd collects,' said Kendal, adding, as he half-curiously shifted his eye-glass so as to take in Wallace's bronzed, alert countenance, 'How did you happen to know her?'
'Rutherford introduced me. He's an old friend of mine.'
'Well,' said Kendal, moving off, 'Friday, then. I shall be very glad to see Mrs. Stuart; it's ages since I saw her last.'
The American nodded cordially to him, and walked away. He was one of those pleasant, ubiquitous people who know every one and find time for everything—a well-known journalist, something of an artist, and still more of a man of the world, who went through his London season with some outward grumbling, but with a real inward zest such as few popular diners-out are blessed with. That he should have attached himself to the latest star was natural enough. He was the most discreet and profitable of cicerones, with a real talent for making himself useful to nice people. His friendship for Miss Bretherton gave her a certain stamp in Kendal's eyes, for Wallace had a fastidious taste in personalities and seldom made a mistake.
Kendal himself walked home, busy with very different thoughts, and was soon established at his writing-table in his high chambers overlooking an inner court of the Temple. It was a bright afternoon; the spring sunshine on the red roofs opposite was clear and gay; the old chimney-stacks, towering into the pale blue sky, threw sharp shadows on the rich red and orange surface of the tiles. Below, the court was half in shadow, and utterly quiet and deserted. To the left there was a gleam of green, atoning for its spring thinness and scantiness by a vivid energy of colour; while straight across the court, beyond the rich patchwork of the roofs and the picturesque outlines of the chimneys, a delicate piece of white stone-work rose into air—the spire of one of Wren's churches, as dainty, as perfect, and as fastidiously balanced as the hand of man could leave it.
Inside, the room was such as fitted a studious bachelor of means. The book-cases on the walls held old college classics and law-books underneath, and above a miscellaneous literary library, of which the main bulk was French, while the side-wings, so to speak, had that tempting miscellaneous air—here a patch of German, there an island of Italian; on this side rows of English poets, on the other an abundance of novels of all languages—which delights the fond heart of the book-lover. The pictures were mostly autotypes and photographs from subjects of Italian art, except in one corner, where a fine little collection of French historical engravings completely covered the wall, and drew a visitor's attention by the brilliancy of their black and white. On the writing-table were piles of paper-covered French books, representing for the most part the palmy days of the Romantics, though every here and there were intervening strata of naturalism, balanced in their turn by recurrent volumes of Sainte-Beuve. The whole had a studious air. The books were evidently collected with a purpose, and the piles of orderly MSS. lying on the writing-table seemed to sum up and explain their surroundings.
The only personal ornament of the room was a group of photographs on the mantelpiece. Two were faded and brown, and represented Kendal's parents, both of whom had been dead some years. The other was a large cabinet photograph of a woman no longer very young—a striking-looking woman, with a fine worn face and a general air of distinction and character. There was a strong resemblance between her features and those of Eustace Kendal, and she was indeed his elder and only sister, the wife of a French senator, and her brother's chief friend and counsellor. Madame de Châteauvieux was a very noticeable person, and her influence over Eustace had been strong ever since their childish days. She was a woman who would have justified a repetition in the present day of Sismondi's enthusiastic estimate of the women of the First Empire. She had that mélange du meilleur ton, 'with the purest elegance of manner, and a store of varied information, with vivacity of impression and delicacy of feeling, which,' as he declared to Madame d'Albany, 'belongs only to your sex, and is found in its perfection only in the best society of France.'
In the days when she and Eustace had been the only children of a distinguished and wealthy father, a politician of some fame, and son-in-law to the Tory premier of his young days, she had always led and influenced her brother. He followed her admiringly